A Pupil Returns To Teach

Woman's Personal Experiences Help The Mentally Ill

Not everyone who deals with the mentally-ill residents floating in and out of homeless shelters can honestly say, ``I know how you feel.'' Susie Whittier can.

She's watched her stable, middle-class family life crumble into nothing. She knows all about renouncing medication and simply giving up when the days become overwhelming. She's collapsed into her own black cave of suicidal despair.

So it is no surprise when Harriett, a middle-aged woman who suffers from depression and uncontrollable mood swings, doesn't hesitate to tell Whittier of recent dreams that have scared her as the two drive to Harriett's dentist appointment.

``I was thinking about my dead parents, and I was yearning for them,'' Harriett says. ``I wanted to go to them, but they've been dead a long time.''

Whittier's voice is suddenly softer, almost confessional. It gives even the chatty, self-absorbed Harriett momentary pause despite the roar of traffic.

``I know how that is,'' she replies. Whittier recounts her own nightmare in which no one is listening to her urgent pleas. She wakes up screaming, angry and desperate, trying to get their attention. ``I guess I felt frustrated that no one was paying any attention to me,'' she tells Harriett.

In the world of treatment for mental patients living on their own, where relapses are routine and where normal is relative, Whittier is a pupil come to teach. A discarded, depression-ridden homemaker dropped into a Salvation Army shelter three years ago, Whittier now is on the staff of the Hampton-Newport News Community Services Board, working with people who mirror her former life.

The 52-year-old mother brings something that's not found on the resumes of her colleagues at the board: first-hand experience of life on the streets with mental illness.

Whittier is still on the streets. But now she's armed with case files, a cellular phone and a government car. Bolstered by a daily dose of 30 milligrams of Paxil, an antidepressant, Whittier's mission is to look after a list of residents with mental problems trying to live semi-independent lives.

Her formal title is peer counselor. But as a member of a team spearheading one of two pilot community-treatment programs statewide, Whittier is more than that: a tale of success in a line of work that offers daily doses of disappointment.

``She can see a different side of clients that we may not see as `professionals' sitting here,'' said Felicia Tyler, manager of the community treatment program operating in Newport News and Hampton and known as ACCESS.

Said Dee Schwartz, one of the team members: ``Susie's really good about telling them, `You need to take your medications.' The nurses can talk until they're blue in the face. When Susie tells them, they listen.''

There was a time when Whittier needed someone to say the same words to her. A native of Cortland, N.Y., Whittier trained as a nurse and launched a career in the Air Force. She had three children and a bright outlook.

But by the mid-1980s, in the middle of her second marriage, the dark clouds began gathering. Her son began having serious problems in school. Her marriage seemed to evolve into a never-ending series of conflicts for which she was always blamed. And a corrosive depression began to take hold. She left the Air Force and bounced from one part-time job to another, often being told she was too slow or too unskilled.

The depression became unbearable in 1988, while the family lived in Oklahoma. A bottle of sleeping pills seemed to offer the only consolation. She swallowed the pills and lay down. But she was found and rushed to the hospital.

Whittier was diagnosed with depression. To help her cope, she was started on a regimen of antidepressant drugs.

Later, her husband was transferred to Langley Air Force Base. They divorced in 1995, and she continued to struggle with her depression.

``I wanted to be well, and sometimes I would feel better, so I thought I could just stop taking the medication,'' she said.

Other obstacles lay in her path. Whittier's problems were compounded by an increasingly painful case of arthritis, a hearing problem and poor eyesight.

``I was beginning to wonder if anything was going to work right for a little while,'' she said. ``I was really surprised that I was 51 and couldn't keep a job.''

In 1996, Whittier was living with her 19-year-old daughter, Lori, in a Hampton apartment. Lori was married, and a girlfriend needed a place to stay. Whittier had a bad feeling about the friend, and warned Lori she spelled trouble for her daughter's marriage. A quarrel followed, and Whittier found herself ejected by her daughter.